


brick by brick and stone by stone

by prophesyr



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 10:12:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18150512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prophesyr/pseuds/prophesyr
Summary: '   like the mighty phoenix, we will rise. may our ashes ignite and light the way to a brighter future. may our wings help us soar into that unforgiving night.   '—sermon, the project at eden's gate.





	brick by brick and stone by stone

**Author's Note:**

> Posted originally on prophesyr @ tumblr for the Hope County Gothic event.

**HENBANE.**   The first region to fall fully in the hands of the Project was all that overlooked the mighty river. Underpopulated and filled with _**potential**_ , the area was once perfect for a peaceful separation between the county and Joseph’s children. Its banks provided well for **cultivation and cleansing** alike. Few buildings stood in this area, and those which did either stayed untouched or sold to the Project, some for ten times more that their properties were worth.  
  
Perhaps the community had it in their minds that they wanted no more than to pillage and rob, but Joseph was far from the practice of stealing _**futures**_ from another family, short-lived as that future may be.  
  
They erected small altars, buried deep in the woods, each open to the wilderness and public alike. Here, the Father would frequently hold his sermons, pacing **restlessly** with the wild wave of his hands giving his own unique brand of praise to the Voice. His followers would **JOIN** him before the dawn and await the sunrise. They would sit with him under the hot midday Montana sun, and when the sun set, they sat   **e n r a p t u r e d**.  
  
Construction on the Father’s Cross halted, standing in **disarray** for years. Still, his followers left offerings of flowers and handmade wind chimes at its unfinished base. When the space was too _**full**_ to leave more, Joseph moved these to each of the altars where they could jingle in the trees behind his words.  
  
Faiths came and went, some to find a life they dubbed more normal and some to fall into the hands of addiction once more. Each was as kind as the last—filled with reverence and a shy uncertainty. They were all _**BRILLIANT**_. One after the other, they fought to create a plant which could treat any ailment, physical, mental, and emotional. One after they other, they fell to doubt. **Rachel Jessop** was a blessing like no other. Without her, the Project may have crumbled. Without her, they would never have known true Faith.  
  
Under her resourceful command, the Bliss was created in its ultimate form. Whatever power she had, she never once hesitated to use. She   **c a r v e d** the path, connecting every altar in her path. She demolished the hopeless beginnings of the Father’s Cross and watched over the construction of **JOSEPH’S WORD** , a monument which rivaled the Statue of Liberty herself. Because to his people, to his family, to her :   Joseph was the last and only form of liberty to which mankind would ever bear witness.  
  
Thus, the **_Pilgrimage_** was born.  
  
The faithful crawled its path, readily bloodying their bare feet for two weeks in the name of showing their   ** _g r a t i t u d e_** to the Father and to his Faith, carrying only the cross of the Project for protection. They lived off the land and stood and slept only in the **SAFETY** of the her shrines, and when they reached the Pilgrimage’s end, they stood at the edge of Joseph’s Word and seeped in his presence like a **long-needed** drink of water.  
  
Here, they took their **leap** into a new life.  
  
She shaved their heads and stripped them from society’s standards of beauty. She taught them what it meant to _**embrace**_ themselves, to love everything that they were created to be. She showed them insurmountable love, and under her **WINGS** , they evolved far past humanity.  
  
**WHITETAILS.**   Jacob claimed the mountains early, long before the Project expanded into its forests. Their landscape made him feel   **s a f e** , he claimed, but when was the last time the enforcer ever felt safe?  
  
He found an alliance for a spell with a man named _**Eli Palmer**_. Together, the Project and the militia once fit like they were made for each other. The faithful were willing to fight alongside its **soldiers** , and the word of Joseph spoke to more ears than he could have hoped. Alongside a handful of properties, an otherwise disused **VETERAN’S CENTER**  fell into Jacob’s lap, and what he built with it could make the United States military bow at its feet.  
  
They trained **relentlessly** between war and faith. Their creeds were rock solid, though their hardened eyes found humanity once again. Blade, bullet, and blaze, they learned the dangers of trust, the perils of mercy. Before long, those lessons turned their **GUNS** on one other. Where the militia found suspicion that the Project would use their own tactics against them, the faithful   _ **a g g r i e v e d**_ the idea that their allies would only undermine the Father.  
  
The split could be felt all the way through the Henbane and sent a rift throughout the valley. Doors began to lock at night, windows remained shut, and **NEIGHBORLY**  kindness fell to the wayside behind loaded warnings and rifles.  
  
War was in their **blood** , and it was war they would spill atop those peaks.  
  
Without the help of the Whitetails, the faithful grew stronger still. Jacob conditioned his soldiers day and night, pushed them until they either became **INHUMAN** or they crumpled at the mercy their weakness. He took away every worry, every apprehension and turned them into ammunition. With his homemade   ** _a r m y_** at his back, Jacob took control of every outpost the Project once **shared** with the Whitetails. All’s fair, after all. And anyone who refused found they could not go on without Jacob’s guidance.  
  
Those who persevered were brought before the Father and displayed like prized hounds. They displayed their prowess mercilessly, and from them, with a final test of devotion, came the first **CHOSEN** —the women and men, the soldiers who would be charged with the responsibility of keeping the Project safe. Many followed Jacob in the name of bloodshed ;  many understood that they would not see Collapse.  
  
None of them **cared**.  
  
They acted as a protective shell for those who preferred to use the **word** as their shield. Against each other, they displayed _**clearly**_ the strain between Joseph, who believed so adamantly that whatever guided him would also keep him **SAFE** , and his elder brother, who knew that results could only be seen in action.  
  
**HOLLAND VALLEY.**   Much of the valley remained untouched and wild as the animals which inhabited it. Homesteads stood abandoned in offering to the Project. John was generous in what he offered :   no more debt, no more **_WORRY_** in exchange for either their homes or their faith. Many chose the latter and followed at his heels to help ensure the financial **stability** of other families such as themselves. The residents of the scattered towns bristled at the idea of their neighbors joining ranks with what they called a       ‘   cult   ’.  
  
They argued leverage and **manipulation** , and John laughed in their faces. Already, the Project controlled most of the area. With so much reach, he’d argued, so much _**power**_ , why would Joseph need to resort to anything but his own **belief**?  
  
John held his baptisms in the open, always in the same spot at the same time. It felt like a dare, as if he were announcing to the whole of the county,     ‘   So you want a little **blood in the water**? He who finds fault in my purpose, put a bullet in my back.   ‘     And it would have been so easy. Yet, they   **K E P T**  their distance. Perhaps they understood that his work, warped as they called it, was that of a higher power.  
  
He brought those he **cleansed** into a chamber meant for sacrament. He allowed them to spill their confessions, their sins for him to hear. Some where allowed a **PUBLIC** confession, where they bared themselves for their Brothers and Sisters in Joseph. They were offered closure and the chance to be reborn, and _**painstakingly**_ , they took it. With a verdure as vehement as the river itself, they scrubbed their souls clean.  
  
On those who pledged their fealty to him, he placed the marks of the Father and Eden’s Gate. They carried their faults and heartaches with _**HONOR**_. They replaced their shame with esteem and learned to regard their blunders as blessings.  
  
Better was it to find **content** in the spaces regret could not mend.  
  
Not in the heat of Hell itself would John understand the difference between fear and love. Never would he care to find it, for does     ‘   _**awe**_   ‘     not mean both? Are they both not driving motivations behind every great nation? What he established outweighed trust. No more could a man lie to him than turn into a fish on command. Whether they loved him or not did not matter. Love was reserved for the Father. Let the **FEAR** fall upon his own shoulders.  
  
His dominion may have been built on chaos, but the Baptist did more than the family had any right to ask of him. No one gave more of themselves, flesh and bone and being, to the Project.  
  
**THE FATHER’S GATE.**   To the South of the Henbane, a settlement rest past the bliss fields. Makeshift homes wound along streams and between mountains, housing those the Father had named his most   **a l l e g i a n t**.  
  
Within each of them was the peace and purity for which Joseph strived in his entire congregation. Here, they did not rely on the Bliss to make it through a sunny day. They did not wage war in the name of rushing **PROPHECY**. They did not bully those who had different views than they. Theirs was a devotion like no other. Acceptance reined in this place, and come the days after Collapse, it forever will. For here, the Father’s children _**knew**_ that to frolic in the outstretched fields shows more passion than a smoking gun in their soft hands.  
  
Churches littered the area, each no bigger than the residencies at their side. In these, no one preached, not even the Father. These were places of quiet _**reflection**_ and willful solitude. Even at the top of **RAPTOR PEAK** , with hand outstretched to God Himself, one could feel no closer to the Heavens than in this vale.  
  
The largest building here hosted a school for all ages. Any subject needed, Joseph would provide. Teachers from around the world lived among the faithful for **YEARS**. They had no business behind the scope of a rifle or protecting anything but the sanctity of knowledge. Maths to help _**rebuild**_ the world ; science to enhance it, come what may tomorrow ; literature to understand the fallacies of man ; and history in order to stray from the mistakes of their ancestors. All children were taught how to repair a **PLANE** just as easily as bake a cake.  
  
And all here understood what it meant to **coexist**.  
  
Whatever their differences, no one cared. More important things were at stake than the idle judgement of their peers. They worked the fields **DAY AND NIGHT** , living only on the land with the help of solar energy. They replaced money with fair trade and trust. Shops were filled with goods someone did not want that another may need. No one fought. No one stole. **Harmony** was everything they knew, and it reflected in their lifestyle.  
  
The faithful welcomed the Father every night that he chose to ramble there, only accepting an **invitation** to join a family for the night when it came with the request for a new lesson. When he sat with them, he spoke as if they were closer than his own _**brothers**_. With hearts and stomachs full, they would sit on their porch and beckon their neighbors to receive the Father’s word. Tomorrow, he would walk along the river, among the mountains, through the valley—each as shadowy as that of Death. So  **TONIGHT** , they would sit in revelation to receive a message the rest would never understand.  
  
Within this province lie the true   **m e a n i n g** behind the Project at Eden’s Gate.


End file.
